As stated by the EC, renovation by the private housing sector towards increased energy efficiency is seriously lagging behind. As more than sufficient technological solutions are available, focus must be on removing non-technological barriers. The main barriers relate to fragmentation of the renovation offers, resulting in inefficient or only partial solutions. In addition to financial restrictions and unclear benefits, house-owners do not have a structured way to obtain all the necessary information related to renovation measures. One of the ways to solve this, is the use of ‘1-stop shop concept.’ Many initiatives have already been put into practice. Some of these projects were successful, but several were not. They often lack an understanding of the concerns and demands of the house-owners. REFURB 2.0 will tackle the complex interplay of these barriers through coordinated process organisation, innovation and optimization. REFURB 2.0 will bridge the gap between supply and demand side by: • developing a holistic approach to the renovation process in which technology combinations trigger step-by-step deep energy renovation of existing, private residential buildings towards NZEB-standards. • accommodating the technology solutions to the decision-making psychology and ‘language’ of residential house-owners; this will provide the drivers for empowerment and mobilisation of house-owners for deep renovation. • developing a quality and performance protocol to build trust on the demand side. The above mentioned activities will result in dedicated renovation packages for different market segments and regions in Europe, starting with the private residential sector. A small scale pilot will be carried out in order to validate and demonstrate the REFURB 2.0 solution. This will be followed by a roll-out plan to stimulate EU wide uptake. In addition, a transferability plan will be established for other sectors, whereas the social housing sector will be the first ‘follower.

The impacts of climate change on people, planet and prosperity are intensifying. Many regions and communities are struggling to avoid losses and need to step up the effort to increase their climate resilience. Ongoing natural capital degradation leads to growing cost, increased vulnerability, and decreased stability of key systems. Therefore, the European Mission on Climate Adaptation acknowledges the need to adopt a systemic approach by working across sectors and disciplines, experimenting, and involving local communities. NBRACER steps up to this challenge with an innovative and practical approach to accelerate the transformation towards climate resilient regions that are safe, green, clean, healthy, and just. Adaptation will be based on the smart packaging of nature-based solutions (NBS), rooted in the resources supplied by biogeographic landscapes, and embedded in a transformative action approach that mobilizes and enables regions and communities to accelerate forward. NBRACER works with Demonstrating and Replicating regions in the European Atlantic biogeographical area to vision and co-design place based sustainable NBS that are at one with the regional landscapes, upscaling these into coherent regional packages and building time and place specific adaptation pathways integrating local solutions and regional scales. This process is supported by a regional scale effort to build adaptation journeys with community support, with input from teams testing and validating place based NBS solution portfolios situated in landscapes. Innovative technical and adaptation transformation support packages provide quantitative mapping methods and a transformative action approach and capacity building, and networking enable scaling out and building connections. Led by Deltares, advanced in climate adaptation science, the consortium builds synergy from the strength of practitioners, ecosystem engineers, innovators of transformative adaptation, finance, and capacity building experts.

The SUSTAIN project contributes to the challenges, cities and regions throughout Europe face by developing education innovation that surpasses school boundaries and rigid curricula. The project develops innovative, state-of-the-art learning practices to empower pupils and teachers to engage with real-life challenges: challenges that require them to think for themselves, step out of the classroom and connect to professional networks that serve sustainable development in their region. The project strives to: • Spark dialogues on sustainable landscapes between secondary schools, universities and other educational providers, to articulate a sense of urgency for regional sustainable development goals; • Champion the importance of regional bottom-up so-called STEM learning ecosystems to formal and informal education providers, identify key actors and set a shared regional science education agenda, • Deeply engage pupils and their caregivers in three countries with hands-on citizen science work, thus stimulating critical thinking and raising interest in STEM learning and work; • Equip school teachers with the skills to bring together formal and informal learning for citizen science, through a comprehensive professional development programme; • Commit to incremental growth in the excellence of the above initiatives and networks, and build capacity to improve science education through a tailored evaluation, monitoring and peer-learning programme; • Identify good online and offline practices on science education and/or citizen science and disseminate them at regional, national and international scales. Twelve partners, being four universities, six schools, one local stakeholder together with European Science Engagement networks, formed together the SUSTAIN consortium. This consortium actively built STEM learning ecosystems on sustainable landscapes, both at the European level as regionally in the three countries (Spain, Cyprus, and the Netherlands). These interdisciplinary ecosystems consist of secondary school teachers, scientists working in the field of sustainable landscapes, and providers of science education and communication. Geographically, the project has a pan-European perspective, with a regional focus on the Northern Netherlands, the region of Valencia, Spain and Cyprus. Together, the consortium developed three online modules that increase awareness of the urgency to contribute to the local environment. Each module focuses on a specific topic, such as biodiversity and food web structure, water management and bird migration. All modules are based on a regional challenge, such as decreasing meadow bird population (Netherlands), falling water levels (Spain) and illegal bird trapping for consumption (Cyprus). Included in the three online modules are materials on academic skills to foster critical thinking (as essential 21st century skills) by secondary school pupils, and webinars to support the teachers while running the modules. With these modules, pupils learn to analyse complex social relevant topics as sustainable landscapes, develop a critical attitude and form their own opinions. In addition, they met role models and learned to appreciate the role of science in society. Based on their experience, the consortium wrote a roadmap on setting up a STEM learning ecosystem on sustainable landscapes. The consortium, together with the NUCLEUS project and members of the EUSEA network, co-created an online platform that showcases a number of recommended formats of activities designed to encourage participatory science engagement, showing a range of possibilities and some practical examples, which can be implemented by teachers across Europe. The platform also offers an overview of valuable toolkits and good reads related to science communication and public engagement. This platform turns out to be a lively and active platform that will keep on developing - both with off- and online interactive formats.

SCREEN aims at the definition of a replicable systemic approach towards a transition to Circular Economy in EU regions within the context of the Smart Specialization Strategy, through the identification and implementation of operational synergies between R&I investments from H2020 and the European Structural and Investment Funds, thus contributing to novel future eco-innovative and horizontal business models across different value chains. The concept of the action is to develop a EU reference framework for establish operational synergies between Horizon 2020 and the European Structural and Investment Funds related to Circular Economy by: a) Sustaining the regional actors’ participation at H2020 The mechanism of the “vouchers”, already adopted in the past, will be reinforced an harmonized, in order to ensure common rules in EU regions and therefore encouraging to composition of international Consortia applying for circular economy projects related to the regional Smart Specialisation. b) Encouraging the entrepreneurial initiatives based on H2020 project’s results The participating Regions will agree about a specific rule in their Structural Funds giving an advantage for those initiatives targeted to the exploitation of the H2020 project results with a circular economy approach. c) Investigating the possibility of maximizing the H2020 investment through a “recovery”(fully or partial) of well ranked unfinanced proposals dealing with circular economy Even if there is a clear presence of several bureaucratic and operational barriers, a possible solution could have an impressive multiplier effect on the H2020 results. The approach of the action is to leverage on growing industry sectors in EU regions to act as a driver also for the less performing ones, through a circular economy approach, and to support the emergence of new actors in the regional economies leading to new or redesigned value chains.

Water is central to all human activities, to all components of the EU Green Deal and to several UN SDGs. The Water4All Partnership aims at enabling water security for all on the long term through boosting systemic transformations and changes across the entire research – water innovation pipeline, fostering the matchmaking between problem owners and solution providers. It gathers more than 70 partners, R&I funders, environment ministries, local authorities, European, national and regional-scale networks, research performing organisations. It will collaborate with other relevant R&I initiatives. Water4All proposes a portfolio of multi-national, cross-sectoral activities, targeting a variety of actors, intending to generate the following outputs: - Strengthen the water R&I collaboration at European and international levels, across at least 31 countries, notably through Joint Transnational Calls - Coordinate and leverage the activities of the Water R&I community - Support and promote the demonstration and access to market of innovative solutions - Produce, share and better communicate water-related knowledge & data, from local to global scales - Enhance talent development of water R&I professionals - Foster capacity development and life-long training of water policy-makers, stakeholders and civil society - Design & implement approaches for participatory development of innovation Water4All will run its activities across 7 themes of its strategic agenda: water for circular economy; water for ecosystems and biodiversity; sustainable water management; water and health; water infrastructure; international cooperation; water governance. Water4All’s outputs will contribute to: - Deliver sound knowledge, tools and evidence basis on water for policy- & decision-making - Improve consideration of water impacts in all relevant policies - Enhance the field/market use of innovative solutions to water challenges - Increase citizens’ awareness and engagement for an inclusive water